Ungrateful returns. The wind batters the gingko, a cardboard box sails by six stories up. Absence grows familiar, still, unpalatable. There’s a different sort of beauty in these geometric nights, so abstract, divorced from messy life. A light goes on, a light goes off. You wrote from London, it’s nearly dawn there, now. Or then. I still wake and wonder where I am. This sky is toothless gray, no stars for all the light but […]
Al pastor with big hunks of piña, a raucous song coming from a band of young drunks, is it Roma, Condesa? These streets run around and around like a race track. Cerveza at altitude. Joven, cinco más por favor, con todo. What warmth and light at this hour of night. And absolutely nothing at right angles, walls coming out like full bellies, pavement in riot, this city sinking down into the prior. Poco que sé. […]
Rain, finally. As if home was returning from battle– the cold slick road engulfed correctly the familiar treachery of a high mountain pass– prodigal clouds come back as if visitors. Who knew this summer could actually end? A timely progression of seasons, how strangely normal. Still a headache from yesterday’s smoke, but seeing it, belief and then such relief despite white-knuckle driving for hours after
It’s not pretty math one saddled with the remainder one the larger denominator one always wanting more This crescent moon is a quarter this night is one third over this silence a tense zero some bad egg that might hatch
too tired to sleep a small gold moth darts in the dark like doubt or a heartbeat the night puts an edge on memories no answer, no answer, those were answers enough
Woke up to End of Days, the sun an angry ember in an asbestos sky, the only thing not on fire, and still death to breathe– woke up to a burning throat, eyes wet but even that moisture went– woke up to a sunset at dawn, a dead day, smoke following us as far as we could flee, South, West, the sky never got right– that sick yellow hue of a blister– we kept all […]
Untethering in stages– the front door closed the train from work mechanical issues a gate change, delayed, the salmon sky turned black now, it’s beginning to feel late, but when did I leave, or have I left yet? Also a gradient, shades of leaving, and arriving, and still customs to clear when we get there, a man paces, a baby sleeps likes a baby in a collapsible stroller, stasis, the man curses under his breath, […]
Windows down driving over the lake the green scent of it languid humidity and the city lights gem-hued, strewn across sky and water, for seventy-thousand seven hundred and ten feet, some peace, spanning the gap, the longest floating bridge in the world, except for hope
This anger would be easier if I was a painter, could spill it out in cadmium red and yellow ochre, let layers build up– . This anger has texture, rough as a raised fist. In solidarity, or to land a blow? I don’t know, it chokes out eloquence. . How could such hate be lauded? Add some cheap gold foil to the composition, scattered senselessly. Rabidly. . A heart is a muscle, it can fail, […]
I could sleep now in this raft of a bed, or later, or eat an unreasonable dinner, or make something sensible, or wait, getting lost in a book, or a thought, or these small rooms, quieter in your abscence. Another city night, some man sings loudly into the velvety dusk, and it’s not clear whether the high rises are cast in cool blue hues due to this sky or to their glass or if such […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 